Mr. Morrice, I want to start with you. I was very interested in your example of VeriForm. You've talked about several other businesses that have also gone through this process and seeing an improvement in their bottom line through the process.

Is it your sense that these businesses are strictly driven by that desire for an improved bottom line, or is there actually a sense of them really wanting to do the right thing also from an environmental aspect and to be truly stewards of their environment and its sustainability?

I think one important divide would be those that are publicly traded versus those that are private firms. For those that are publicly traded, they are required to meet a profitability objective. Still, that means engaging employees and their employees may have a real altruistic interest, so that does return to their bottom line when they can increase employee retention. Ultimately, though, for a publicly traded private company, profitability is the bottom line.

For the private firms, like a VeriForm, as I mentioned in that example, Paul had a very altruistic perspective. Certainly, we see that amongst some of the smaller firms in the Waterloo region that participate. That altruistic interest is then supported as they start to see profitability alongside it. That would vary, depending on the firm and on their interests. I would say it's a mix of both but that the success of the program overall depends heavily on being able to translate it back for those in the firm, whether it's the ultimate decision-maker or not, that you can come back to underscore the profitability interest. I think this returns to the previous question about incentives and about what government can do to increase the profitability and to make it more attractive, so that you support any altruism and any kind of personal-value interest from a private firm.

Sir, if I may say one more thing on the public sector, there's obviously more latitude there, too.

I know in my previous life in business, we were very often—in fact, almost inevitably— ahead of the curve even on regulatory issues. I think of things like silver recovery from the film work that we did. When they came to us and said here are the new regulations on silver recovery, we told them we had been doing that for over 10 years already and that those were things we do. With vegetable-based inks, they said we had to get away from petroleum-based inks. We hadn't been using petroleum-based inks for 10 years already. This was a constant ongoing thing. Also incentives, like you say, and then going forward and changing lighting within our facility, there was a return on investment on that very quickly, even without a government incentive. My sense is that a lot of companies, and especially the privately held companies, are looking at a broader perspective also for the greater good of their communities.

In that light, are you finding that companies are going through this process with a view for themselves, for their own personal private company? Are you also seeing them getting much more engaged in the environmental aspects of their community and the sustainability of their community, and becoming actively involved in that through themselves and through their employees?

There is absolutely a trickle-down effect, where we see employees of regional carbon initiative members who are then participants in different programs of the GRCA, for example. They may then also volunteer with one of the many environmental groups in their community, so it is another channel through which we can connect with Canadians and speak to their connection with nature and to their own interest in the environmental performance and record of our country. Absolutely, engaging through an employer is a critical way to speak to Canadians.

Ms. Ryan, I was interested in the example you brought forward regarding Toyota and their financial and voluntary work in projects that are central to cleaning up environmental issues in the region. Could you give us a few examples of some of those projects?

Toyota has contributed significantly to the building of one of our nature centres, the Toyota Nature Centre, which is located in Cambridge, so they actually have a lot of ownership for our park, Shade's Mills, which is where that's located. I think for the last five years they've been dedicating approximately three to five days with a crew and it's a very sought-after gig for their workers, so they actually run a lottery. They have done trail work at Shade's Mills. They came in and built a boardwalk, I believe, and did some mulching. They painted the nature centre during one of their work sessions.

We had them go over to one of our properties—it's not a park—that is very popular for hiking, over in Guelph at the Arkell Springs area, and they did a great deal of trail work and built some bridges over some wet areas. They spent five days lugging timber to a totally inaccessible area and mulching and cleaning up the trail that's very heavily used. Those are the sorts of things their volunteers are participating in during their work hours.

Are you seeing then through Toyota's involvement in this any kind of trickle-down effects? Are there other corporations, whether large or small, looking to that example and wanting to get involved and actually getting involved in some of these types of projects?

That's a really great question, and yes, we are. We were actually successful at receiving Trillium funding this year so that we can engage a volunteer management person, because we're finding that we are starting to see more individuals and companies, local companies, asking for that sort of experience for their workers and for their members.

We are looking at developing a more structured program to offer that to our groups. Our foundation is going out, of course, and talking to private individuals and businesses. One of the things businesses are asking for is how their employees can participate, even if they are not actually providing a donation at this point in time, although many of them also want to provide a donation along with time. We are trying to engage that need.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's great to be here, especially on these kinds of interesting and exciting topics.

Mr. Morrice, we can clearly see the excitement you still have. You haven't been worn out by the challenges you're facing. Certainly it's just unbelievable what's going on in the Waterloo region, and it was very exciting to hear about it. I've had several visits and have several more coming up over the summer. It's fascinating to visit the various sites and see the growth that's happening, so I congratulate all of you in that particular area.

I notice you are reaching out in various areas. Are you going beyond the Ontario borders at this particular time with your initiatives to try to encourage companies to participate or are you still very localized in the Ontario region?

That's absolutely an option. We are trying to scale in a measured way; that is, to ensure the program is financially self-sufficient in multiple communities across the province. That means that currently we are in seven communities in Ontario. As I mentioned earlier, those are Niagara, Waterloo, Sudbury, York, Durham, Kingston, and Ottawa.

As we receive more support and we see communities such as carbon 613, for example, launch and we see strong uptake from the private sector here in Ottawa and to the extent that CoLab receives additional support, that puts us in a position to respond to interest. We have received calls from municipalities as well as environmental not-for-profits in Manitoba, Alberta, and Quebec that we would be very interested in responding to. Again, this is not a Waterloo region item. This is not an Ontario thing. This is a Canadian opportunity.

The benefits I mentioned around reducing environmental impact, increasing profitability, and growing a low-carbon economy are of interest to Canadians and Canadian businesses across the country. To the extent that the model we are sharing can be part of that mix, we are very interested in sharing this with communities across the country.

Sustainability CoLab has four employees and is very focused on a model that scales based on the workforce of the local entities, so Sustainability CoLab does not have local employees in every community. Rather, for example, here in Ottawa EnviroCentre is our network member. EnviroCentre has some 20-odd staff, two of which will be focused on carbon 613. Our support is behind the scenes providing the coaching, the resources, the peer-to-peer groups, and ideally funding that can be leveraged with their local relationships. That allows us to stay nimble and to focus not on Sustainability CoLab as an entity but rather on the on-the-ground work happening in communities across the province.

The story that you told us earlier and the kinds of changes that he was able to make to his small company so very quickly are the kinds of things that need to be translated off to many others because many small things can make a huge difference.

One of things in Ontario in particular that might be driving some of this need for alternative sources is the issue of the cost of water, hydro, and so on. Certainly from a business perspective, I would think that they would be very open to being triggered with ideas and opportunities. Some of these partners that you have I would imagine are reaching out to some of the larger corporations. The smaller ones should be an easier turnaround, but some of our major companies must be already taking significant steps to reduce their resource use, are they not?

Many of the larger firms we work with have dedicated staff. Sun Life Financial has a director of sustainability, for example. Those are the kinds of people we want to have at the front of the room to be sharing the successes that companies like Sun Life and the City of Kitchener have had so that other businesses follow suit faster and have similar success.

Then to your earlier question, they can then take on projects that go well beyond a payback period of two years or less because they've created a revolving fund where savings are reinvested back into projects that can be more ambitious and then in turn inspire others to follow suit. This is very much about creating a community of support so that the stories like VeriForm and Paul Rak are not a one-off but become the norm. In turn we can challenge Paul. In his first two years he did the really easy stuff, and as a result of being part of the network, he's now gone above and beyond. As I said it's now at the 80% reduction level and at the same time he doubled his profit.

Networks like this can spur on those who are already ahead of the curve and bring in a larger tent of unlikely players, whether it's the mall or the hospital, the manufacturer or the utility. There's a business interest for them, there's a values-based interest for them, and ultimately there's a strong interest in growing the low-carbon economy, which is growing faster than the rest of the economy as a whole.

Municipalities are critical players in all seven of the communities in which we operate. In fact when we select a member, that is to say, when we receive applications from groups like EnviroCentre in Ottawa or reThink Green in Sudbury, one of the criteria is how supportive the municipality is. What kind of climate change action plan do they have? What amount of funding have they put in?

We see often that municipal leadership can very much spur on the private sector to be an active player. To be fair, across the country on sustainability so much of the leadership we are seeing has been driven at the local level. We want to leverage that and build off of that, and in turn, that's where I bring it to you to encourage stronger federal support to match what we're seeing at the local level.

I want to thank the two witnesses for appearing and for their testimony.

Mr. Morrice, you just talked about how important it is for municipalities and provinces to participate. What role does the federal government play in your initiatives? Actually, the question is also for Ms. Ryan.

The current role of the federal government is almost nil. That is to say that locally MPs in each of the communities have been very supportive. Certainly that's been the case in Waterloo region, and that's actually part of our assessment of communities across the province. We look at the municipality. We look at the political support at the federal and provincial level, and certainly we have MPs who are supporting strongly. Where that translates into federal programs for funding, for example, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, there is no current federal funding I am aware of that is going to any seven of the programs in which this currently operates. That's certainly a challenge.

In terms of the ideal state, I point to some of the support that's being provided provincially through funding agencies like the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Through the provincial government we just recently announced that the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change has provided an initial $100,000 to the CoLab network, which allows us, as CoLab, to then incentivize our members to be able to provide them with support that they can leverage and build more support from. It's a one-off. It's certainly not our end game. We would like to be in a position to have a fund so that with that fund we could then say, yes, EnviroCentre has a business plan, let us write you a cheque, and again as you launch your program, as you get your first three members, your next 20 members.

That incentivizing we can't currently do, and we would be thrilled to have provincial and federal support to be doing work of that kind.

Similar to the previous answer, we generally are relying entirely on the province or the municipalities. The rural water quality program would not have the success it has without the commitment of the municipalities for longer than 15 years.

Where the GRCA does partner with the federal government it is through programs that come and go, through short-term funding, through any of the programs that the federal government has around eco-action, a variety of those types of things. We are applying right now for the 150th funding that came out for some capital works to improve our parks and infrastructure for the community. It is very hit and miss and when we can actually access those programs, when we qualify, when we have projects that are ready to meet the qualifications.... In some cases these may be capital works that are shovel ready or it may be targeted very much to species at risk, so through Environment Canada we apply each year to the habitat stewardship fund and successfully receive less than $100,000, which we then can make available to areas that do not have municipal support or adequate municipal support for some of those projects.

It is not consistent, but we try to leverage our other funds when available.